Chapter III - Marriage

What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
In the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but
are as the angels of God in heaven.--JESUS.

WHEN our great Teacher came to him for baptism,
John was astounded. Reading his thoughts, Jesus
added: "Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us
to fulfil all righteousness." Jesus' concessions (in certain
cases) to material methods were for the advancement of
spiritual good.

Marriage temporal

Marriage is the legal and moral provision for generation among human kind. Until the spiritual creation
is discerned intact, is apprehended and understood, and His kingdom is come as in the vision
of the Apocalypse, - where the corporeal sense of creation was cast out, and its spiritual sense was revealed from
heaven,--marriage will continue, subject to such moral
regulations as will secure increasing virtue.

Fidelity required

Infidelity to the marriage covenant is the social scourge
of all races, "the pestilence that walketh in darkness,
. . . the destruction that wasteth at noonday."
The commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," is no less imperative than the one, "Thou
shalt not kill."

Chastity is the cement of civilization and progress.
Without it there is no stability in society, and without it
one cannot attain the Science of Life.

Mental elements

Union of the masculine and feminine qualities constitutes completeness. The masculine mind reaches a
higher tone through certain elements of the
feminine, while the feminine mind gains courage and strength through masculine qualities. These
different elements conjoin naturally with each other, and
their true harmony is in spiritual oneness. Both sexes
should be loving, pure, tender, and strong. The attraction between native qualities will be perpetual only as it
is pure and true, bringing sweet seasons of renewal like
the returning spring.

Affection's demands

Beauty, wealth, or fame is incompetent to meet the
demands of the affections, and should never weigh
against the better claims of intellect, goodness, and virtue. Happiness is spiritual,
born of Truth and Love. It is unselfish; therefore
it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to
share it.

Help and discipline

Human affection is not poured forth vainly, even
though it meet no return. Love enriches the nature, enlarging, purifying, and elevating it. The wintry
blasts of earth may uproot the flowers of affection, and scatter them to the winds; but this severance
of fleshly ties serves to unite thought more closely to
God, for Love supports the struggling heart until it ceases
to sigh over the world and begins to unfold its wings for
heaven.

Marriage is unblest or blest, according to the disappointments it involves or the hopes it fulfils. To happify

existence by constant intercourse with those adapted to
elevate it, should be the motive of society. Unity of
spirit gives new pinions to joy, or else joy's drooping
wings trail in dust.

Chord and discord

Ill-arranged notes produce discord. Tones of the
human mind may be different, but they should be concordant in order to blend properly. Unselfish
ambition, noble life-motives, and purity, these constituents of thought, mingling, constitute individually and collectively true happiness, strength, and
permanence.

Mutual freedom

There is moral freedom in Soul. Never contract the
horizon of a worthy outlook by the selfish exaction of
all another's time and thoughts. With additional joys, benevolence should grow more
diffusive. The narrowness and jealousy, which would
confine a wife or a husband forever within four walls, will
not promote the sweet interchange of confidence and love;
but on the other hand, a wandering desire for incessant
amusement outside the home circle is a poor augury for
the happiness of wedlock. Home is the dearest spot on
earth, and it should be the centre, though not the boundary, of the affections.

A useful suggestion

Said the peasant bride to her lover: "Two eat no more
together than they eat separately." This is a hint that
a wife ought not to court vulgar extravagance
or stupid ease, because another supplies her
wants. Wealth may obviate the necessity for toil or the
chance for ill-nature in the marriage relation, but nothing can abolish the cares of marriage.

Differing duties

"She that is married careth . . . how she may please
her husband," says the Bible; and this is the pleasantest

thing to do. Matrimony should never be entered into
without a full recognition of its enduring obligations on
both sides. There should be the most tender
solicitude for each other's happiness, and mutual attention and approbation should wait on all the years
of married life.

Mutual compromises will often maintain a compact
which might otherwise become unbearable. Man should
not be required to participate in all the annoyances and
cares of domestic economy, nor should woman be expected to understand political economy. Fulfilling the
different demands of their united spheres, their sympathies should blend in sweet confidence and cheer, each
partner sustaining the other,--thus hallowing the union
of interests and affections, in which the heart finds peace
and home.

Trysting renewed

Tender words and unselfish care in what promotes the
welfare and happiness of your wife will prove more salutary
in prolonging her health and smiles than stolid
indifference or jealousy. Husbands, hear this
and remember how slight a word or deed may renew the
old trysting-times.

After marriage, it is too late to grumble over incompatibility of disposition. A mutual understanding should
exist before this union and continue ever after, for deception is fatal to happiness.

Permanent obligation

The nuptial vow should never be annulled, so long as
its moral obligations are kept intact; but the frequency
of divorce shows that the sacredness of this relationship is losing its influence, and that fatal
mistakes are undermining its foundations. Separation
never should take place, and it never would, if both

husband and wife were genuine Christian Scientists.
Science inevitably lifts one's being higher in the scale of
harmony and happiness.

Permanent affection

Kindred tastes, motives, and aspirations are necessary
to the formation of a happy and permanent companionship. The beautiful in character is also the
good, welding indissolubly the links of affection. A mother's affection cannot be weaned from her
child, because the mother-love includes purity and constancy, both of which are immortal. Therefore maternal
affection lives on under whatever difficulties.

From the logic of events we learn that selfishness
and impurity alone are fleeting, and that wisdom will
ultimately put asunder what she hath not joined
together.

Centre for affections

Marriage should improve the human species, becoming
a barrier against vice, a protection to woman, strength to
man, and a centre for the affections. This,
however, in a majority of cases, is not its
present tendency, and why? Because the education of
the higher nature is neglected, and other considerations,
- passion, frivolous amusements, personal adornment,
display, and pride,--occupy thought.

Spiritual concord

An ill-attuned ear calls discord harmony, not appreciating concord. So physical sense, not discerning the true
happiness of being, places it on a false basis.
Science will correct the discord, and teach us
life's sweeter harmonies.

Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind,
and happiness would be more readily attained and would
be more secure in our keeping, if sought in Soul. Higher
enjoyments alone can satisfy the cravings of immortal

man. We cannot circumscribe happiness within the
limits of personal sense. The senses confer no real
enjoyment.

Ascendency of good

The good in human affections must have ascendency
over the evil and the spiritual over the animal, or happiness will never be won. The attainment of
this celestial condition would improve our
progeny, diminish crime, and give higher aims to ambition. Every valley of sin must be exalted, and every
mountain of selfishness be brought low, that the highway
of our God may be prepared in Science. The offspring
of heavenly-minded parents inherit more intellect, better
balanced minds, and sounder constitutions.

Propensities inherited

If some fortuitous circumstance places promising children in the arms of gross parents, often these beautiful
children early droop and die, like tropical
flowers born amid Alpine snows. If perchance
they live to become parents in their turn, they may reproduce in their own helpless little ones the grosser traits
of their ancestors. What hope of happiness, what noble
ambition, can inspire the child who inherits propensities
that must either be overcome or reduce him to a loathsome wreck?

Is not the propagation of the human species a greater
responsibility, a more solemn charge, than the culture of
your garden or the raising of stock to increase your flocks
and herds? Nothing unworthy of perpetuity should be
transmitted to children.

The formation of mortals must greatly improve to
advance mankind. The scientific morale of marriage is
spiritual unity. If the propagation of a higher human
species is requisite to reach this goal, then its material con

ditions can only be permitted for the purpose of generating. The foetus must be kept mentally pure and the
period of gestation have the sanctity of virginity.

The entire education of children should be such as to
form habits of obedience to the moral and spiritual law,
with which the child can meet and master the belief in socalled physical laws, a belief which breeds disease.

Inheritance heeded

If parents create in their babes a desire for incessant
amusement, to be always fed, rocked, tossed, or talked
to, those parents should not, in after years,
complain of their children's fretfulness or frivolity, which the parents themselves have occasioned.
Taking less "thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or
what ye shall drink"; less thought "for your body what
ye shall put on," will do much more for the health of the
rising generation than you dream. Children should be
allowed to remain children in knowledge, and should
become men and women only through growth in the
understanding of man's higher nature.

The Mind creative

We must not attribute more and more intelligence
to matter, but less and less, if we would be wise and
healthy. The divine Mind, which forms the
bud and blossom, will care for the human
body, even as it clothes the lily; but let no mortal interfere with God's government by thrusting in the laws of
erring, human concepts.

Superior law of Soul

The higher nature of man is not governed by the lower;
if it were, the order of wisdom would be reversed.
Our false views of life hide eternal harmony,
and produce the ills of which we complain.
Because mortals believe in material laws and reject the
Science of Mind, this does not make materiality first and

the superior law of Soul last. You would never think
that flannel was better for warding off pulmonary disease
than the controlling Mind, if you understood the Science
of being.

Spiritual origin

In Science man is the offspring of Spirit. The beautiful, good, and pure constitute his ancestry. His origin is
not, like that of mortals, in brute instinct, nor
does he pass through material conditions prior
to reaching intelligence. Spirit is his primitive and ultimate source of being; God is his Father, and Life is the
law of his being.

The rights of woman

Civil law establishes very unfair differences between the
rights of the two sexes. Christian Science furnishes no
precedent for such injustice, and civilization
mitigates it in some measure. Still, it is a
marvel why usage should accord woman less rights than
does either Christian Science or civilization.

Unfair discrimination

Our laws are not impartial, to say the least, in their
discrimination as to the person, property, and parental
claims of the two sexes. If the elective franchise for women will remedy the evil with-
out encouraging difficulties of greater magnitude, let us
hope it will be granted. A feasible as well as rational
means of improvement at present is the elevation of
society in general and the achievement of a nobler
race for legislation,--a race having higher aims and
motives.

If a dissolute husband deserts his wife, certainly the
wronged, and perchance impoverished, woman should be
allowed to collect her own wages, enter into business
agreements, hold real estate, deposit funds, and own her
children free from interference.

Want of uniform justice is a crying evil caused by the
selfishness and inhumanity of man. Our forefathers
exercised their faith in the direction taught by the Apostle
James, when he said: "Pure religion and undefiled before
God and the Father, is this, To visit the fatherless and
widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted
from the world."

Benevolence hindered

Pride, envy, or jealousy seems on most occasions to
be the master of ceremonies, ruling out primitive Christianity. When a man lends a helping hand
to some noble woman, struggling alone with
adversity, his wife should not say, "It is never well to
interfere with your neighbor's business." A wife is
sometimes debarred by a covetous domestic tyrant from
giving the ready aid her sympathy and charity would
afford.

Progressive development

Marriage should signify a union of hearts. Furthermore, the time cometh of which Jesus spake, when he
declared that in the resurrection there should
be no more marrying nor giving in marriage,
but man would be as the angels. Then shall Soul rejoice in its own, in which passion has no part. Then
white-robed purity will unite in one person masculine wisdom and feminine love, spiritual understanding and perpetual peace.

Until it is learned that God is the Father of all, marriage will continue. Let not mortals permit a disregard
of law which might lead to a worse state of society than
now exists. Honesty and virtue ensure the stability of
the marriage covenant. Spirit will ultimately claim its
own,--all that really is,--and the voices of physical
sense will be forever hushed.

Experience should be the school of virtue, and human
happiness should proceed from man's highest nature.
May Christ, Truth, be present at every bridal
altar to turn the water into wine and to give to
human life an inspiration by which man's spiritual and
eternal existence may be discerned.

Righteous foundations

If the foundations of human affection are consistent
with progress, they will be strong and enduring. Divorces
should warn the age of some fundamental error
in the marriage state. The union of the sexes
suffers fearful discord. To gain Christian Science and its
harmony, life should be more metaphysically regarded.

Powerless promises

The broadcast powers of evil so conspicuous to-day
show themselves in the materialism and sensualism of
the age, struggling against the advancing
spiritual era. Beholding the world's lack of
Christianity and the powerlessness of vows to make home
happy, the human mind will at length demand a higher affection.

Transition and reform

There will ensue a fermentation over this as over many
other reforms, until we get at last the clear straining of
truth, and impurity and error are left among
the lees. The fermentation even of fluids is
not pleasant. An unsettled, transitional stage is never
desirable on its own account. Matrimony, which was once
a fixed fact among us, must lose its present slippery footing, and man must find permanence and peace in a more
spiritual adherence.

The mental chemicalization, which has brought conjugal infidelity to the surface, will assuredly throw off
this evil, and marriage will become purer when the scum
is gone.

Sweet are the uses of adversity;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

Salutary sorrow

Trials teach mortals not to lean on a material staff, a broken reed, which pierces the heart. We do not
half remember this in the sunshine of joy
and prosperity. Sorrow is salutary. Through
great tribulation we enter the kingdom. Trials are
proofs of God's care. Spiritual development germinates not from seed sown in the soil of material hopes,
but when these decay, Love propagates anew the higher
joys of Spirit, which have no taint of earth. Each successive stage of experience unfolds new views of divine
goodness and love.

Amidst gratitude for conjugal felicity, it is well to remember how fleeting are human joys. Amidst conjugal
infelicity, it is well to hope, pray, and wait patiently on
divine wisdom to point out the path.

Patience is wisdom

Husbands and wives should never separate if there
is no Christian demand for it. It is better to await the
logic of events than for a wife precipitately
to leave her husband or for a husband to
leave his wife. If one is better than the other, as must
always be the case, the other pre-eminently needs good
company. Socrates considered patience salutary under
such circumstances, making his Xantippe a discipline for
his philosophy.

The gold and dross

Sorrow has its reward. It never leaves us
where it found us. The furnace separates
the gold from the dross that the precious metal may

be graven with the image of God. The cup our Father
hath given, shall we not drink it and learn the lessons
He teaches?

Weathering the storm

When the ocean is stirred by a storm, then the clouds
lower, the wind shrieks through the tightened shrouds,
and the waves lift themselves into mountains.
We ask the helmsman: "Do you know your
course? Can you steer safely amid the storm?" He
answers bravely, but even the dauntless seaman is not
sure of his safety; nautical science is not equal to the
Science of Mind. Yet, acting up to his highest understanding, firm at the post of duty, the mariner works on
and awaits the issue. Thus should we deport ourselves
on the seething ocean of sorrow. Hoping and working, one should stick to the wreck, until an irresistible
propulsion precipitates his doom or sunshine gladdens
the troubled sea.

Spiritual power

The notion that animal natures can possibly give force
to character is too absurd for consideration, when we
remember that through spiritual ascendency
our Lord and Master healed the sick, raised
the dead, and commanded even the winds and waves to
obey him. Grace and Truth are potent beyond all other
means and methods.

The lack of spiritual power in the limited demonstration
of popular Christianity does not put to silence the labor
of centuries. Spiritual, not corporeal, consciousness is
needed. Man delivered from sin, disease, and death
presents the true likeness or spiritual ideal.

Basis of true religion

Systems of religion and medicine treat of physical pains
and pleasures, but Jesus rebuked the suffering from any
such cause or effect. The epoch approaches when the

understanding of the truth of being will be the basis of
true religion. At present mortals progress slowly for
fear of being thought ridiculous. They are
slaves to fashion, pride, and sense. Sometime we shall learn how Spirit, the great architect, has
created men and women in Science. We ought to weary
of the fleeting and false and to cherish nothing which
hinders our highest selfhood.

Jealousy is the grave of affection. The presence of
mistrust, where confidence is due, withers the flowers
of Eden and scatters love's petals to decay. Be not
in haste to take the vow "until death do us part."
Consider its obligations, its responsibilities, its relations to your growth and to your influence on other
lives.

Insanity and agamogenesis

I never knew more than one individual who believed
in agamogenesis; she was unmarried, a lovely character, was suffering from incipient insanity, and
a Christian Scientist cured her. I have named
her case to individuals, when casting my bread upon
the waters, and it may have caused the good to ponder
and the evil to hatch their silly innuendoes and lies, since
salutary causes sometimes incur these effects. The perpetuation of the floral species by bud or cell-division is
evident, but I discredit the belief that agamogenesis
applies to the human species.

God's creation intact

Christian Science presents unfoldment, not accretion;
it manifests no material growth from molecule to mind,
but an impartation of the divine Mind to man
and the universe. Proportionately as human
generation ceases, the unbroken links of eternal, harmonious being will be spiritually discerned; and man,

not of the earth earthly but coexistent with God, will
appear. The scientific fact that man and the universe
are evolved from Spirit, and so are spiritual, is as fixed in
divine Science as is the proof that mortals gain the sense
of health only as they lose the sense of sin and disease.
Mortals can never understand God's creation while believing that man is a creator. God's children already created
will be cognized only as man finds the truth of being.
Thus it is that the real, ideal man appears in proportion
as the false and material disappears. No longer to marry
or to be "given in marriage" neither closes man's continuity nor his sense of increasing number in God's infinite plan. Spiritually to understand that there is but
one creator, God, unfolds all creation, confirms the Scriptures, brings the sweet assurance of no parting, no pain,
and of man deathless and perfect and eternal.

If Christian Scientists educate their own offspring
spiritually, they can educate others spiritually and not
conflict with the scientific sense of God's creation. Some
day the child will ask his parent: "Do you keep the First
Commandment? Do you have one God and creator, or
is man a creator?" If the father replies, "God creates
man through man," the child may ask, "Do you teach
that Spirit creates materially, or do you declare that
Spirit is infinite, therefore matter is out of the question?" Jesus said, "The children of this world marry,
and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in
marriage."